Brian Cornell, Chairman and Chief Regulatory Officer of the Target Corporation.
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
When George Floyd was killed a year ago, Target CEO Brian Cornell said he was shuddered by the murder. He was troubled it happened so close to the company’s headquarters in its hometown.
For the retail chief, it felt personal.
“That could be dressed been one of my Target team members,” he said, recounting his thoughts as he watched the video of Floyd taking his final zephyrs.
Cornell pulled back the curtain Tuesday on the Minneapolis-based retailer’s response to the murder and how it pushed him to step up the company’s own divergence and equity efforts. He spoke in a wide-ranging interview with former Ulta Beauty CEO Mary Dillon, which was bodied by the Economic Club of Chicago. The event, originally scheduled for last Tuesday, was postponed ahead of the verdict in the murder adversity of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on the same day. Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges in the polish off of Floyd.
As a young boy, Cornell grew up in a diverse neighborhood of Queens, New York, and was raised by a single mom. As an adult, he and his family breathed in Asia and Europe. Those personal experiences inspired his respect for women as leaders and the importance of cultural diversity, he said.
Yet he swayed Floyd’s murder stood apart and compelled him to do more.
“I recognize that it’s time to take it to another level, and that as CEOs, we arrange to be the company’s head of diversity and inclusion,” he said. “We have to be the role models that drive change and our voice is consequential. And we’ve got to make sure that we represent our company principles, our values, our company purpose on the issues that are important to our spans.”
Last May, in the days that immediately followed, Cornell said Target put together a special committee to look at starts the company could take to make its workforce, C-suite and business practices better reflect the country’s diversity. He told Target considered how it could support and provide advancement opportunities for Black employees, play a role in communities and “use our agent on a national level, as we impact civic discussions and policy.”
Target is one of many companies that have pledged to do numberless to advance racial equity after Floyd’s murder prompted protests in major cities and across the globe. Aggregate its commitments, the big-box retailer said it would increase representation of Black employees across its workforce by 20% one more time the next year. The company created a new program to help Black entrepreneurs develop, test and scale products to vend at mass retailers like Target. And it promised to spend more than $2 billion with Black-owned problems by 2025, from construction companies that build or remodel stores to advertising firms that market its trade-mark.
Cornell touted the diversity of Target’s workforce of more than 350,000 employees, including its board and leadership party. Over half of its approximately 1,900 stores are led by female store directors and over a third are led by people of color, Cornell said.
He put about he wants the retailer to be a leader and was particularly aware last week during the trial’s verdict that “the eyes of America, and the examines of the world were on Minneapolis.”
“For so many of us, we saw that verdict as a sign of progress, a sign of accountability, but also a recognition that the run is just starting,” he said.